Education

Agile methodology- an Introduction

Today the software testing industry is creating next big employment wave in the IT job market. And in that market there is a buzz about “AGILE”. Agile is a technique of software development in which the software is assembled in a process of augmentation over short iterations of 1 to 4 weeks. This process of development is followed to align the process to make the software meet the changing business requirements. This is a better methodology in terms of profit coefficient by developing a software in 6 to 18 months in a single pass by pre-predicting the necessities and the risks that might follow on application. There are lesser risks of failures with a system of regular pointer delivering a final product in a 1 to 4 weeks time after resulting from an iterative process.

Agile methodology has the following positions-

Scrum Master

Agile methodology is practised by a team led by the scrum master who facilitates the team to meet their targets with efficient and proper methods of agile development. A scrum master is responsible for an array of activities ranging from managing co-operative team work avoiding any interruptions, to handling obstacles in any functionality while tracking the process and progress of the organization. A major task of a scrum master is to ensure that the Agile inspect and adapt processes are properly implemented

Product Owner

A product owner is at the business end of the process who is a representative of the customer and ascertains that the business requirements are reached. The string of duties of a Product Owner include characterizing the requirements with a priority rating. Also included is the scheduling of iteration, release dates etc.

Cross-functional Team

The agile team is an active team of 5-9 members of which 3 or 4 belong to the development segment, 1 each for testing, technical lead, scrum master and product owner respectively.Product Owner and Scrum master comprise the Team Interface and the rest are Technical Interface.

Functionality

Team functioning of an Agile team generally has 10 to 15 days as disposal for each iteration to be delivered. The team takes two factors into consideration- Point, which indicates the commitment ability of the team in terms of hours. Each user story is estimated on a point which comprises of 8 hours. And the other factor is Capacity, which measures the hours of commitment of individual team member.